My vision for what the future internet TV interface will look like has five main parts: your own digital content library, niche and main stream show subscriptions, library of streaming content like Netflix, instant streaming rentals and live TV.
Anything you have ever purchased and downloaded will be available to view including your own home videos. People like to buy movies to add to their collection and this collection will be available alongside all the other streaming and live content.
I love the idea of any content creators/publishers being able to make a channel that has multiple ways to monazite. I envision a scenario where the publisher can give the content away and share in the advertising revenue or offer a cheaper paid subscription with limited ads or a higher subscription with no ads. Big Hollywood channels will be right next to home made amature channels, anyone can create and sell their content in the form of subscriptions. There will be subscriptions that are very niche like a snowboard video channel and subscriptions for main stream prime time TV shows, as well as subscriptions for aggregators of content that is curated from all over. Content will be as long as it needs to be from seconds long to hours.
Pay per view rentals will also be available in the interface. Click to rent any new movie releases just like iTunes and Amazon does. And live TV if you want to see it as it releases. Live TV like a sports games could also be recorded and added to your watch later queue. And different levels of streaming content that can be browsed like on Netflix instant watch.
Laid on top of all of this is a stream format that includes your social networks. So you can send videos to friends, rate and comment on all the content you watch. The stream will show videos friends have sent to you, new episodes of shows you subscribe to, recommendations based on past viewed content and reminders of content you watched but didn’t finish – like a movie you started watching on your ipad is then pulled into your stream to finish watching on TV.
Below is what I envision the interface will look like. The stream in the middle, sponsored ads in the right column and your owned content library and subscriptions in the left column.